Also to see that he would be so tactful about asking if the changes are welcome, even though he is who he is and knows it. I like to think there are people in their twenties or teens or even younger browsing HN and subconsciously absorbing the fact that this is how a programming god behaves.
Calling this a "very celebrity grocery list" story is a disservice.
Carmack's one of the most accomplished programmers in history in terms of innovation, skill, and longevity. His words and opinions also carry a fair bit of weight, even today. His contributions and technology choices matter in a way that a celebrity's grocery list do not.
If there's an injustice here, it's the fact that there are many Carmack-level coders out there, toiling away in relative obscurity, who don't have their contributions trumpeted in this way.
'Extreme' maybe an understatement here but it seems like HNers here love seeing the second coming of King Midas when everything he touches turns into gold.
I think you will find Carmack has contributed more to the hacker ecosystem than anyone else if you just take a very shallow peek.
I would suggest to start by reading the source code to Doom, it is surprisingly approachable and educational in several fields of math, geometry, data structures, and computer science. There are even books to help you understand it, heck, there are a dozen or more books about Id software and John Carmack, so there are many authors and readers who feel very differently from you, maybe you could consider the reason. There are many things in our field that would have happened eventually, no matter who did it, but much of Carmack’s contributions really would not have happened without him, he really is in a league of his own.
It’s really amazing to me that you feel so negatively towards people who have endearment for one of the hacker community’s greatest contributors. I can only guess that you might be very unhappy, for that I’m very sorry and I hope it turns around for you very soon.